Russian Background Learners' Chinese Idiom Learning Strategy Research

Chinese idioms present a difficulty for Russian students when they study the language. This work is the first to research learning strategies used by students with Russian language background when studying Chinese idioms, as well as compare the use of learning strategies with that of the students with different language background.This work, drawing experience from both foreign and Chinese learning strategies research, using a questionnaire based on R. Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, have conducted a survey of 99 students who are learning Chinese idioms, have analyzed the data using descriptive statistics, individual samples T-test, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and explored the usage of Chinese idioms learning strategies by the students, the relation between the choice of the strategies and the learner's cultural background, gender, total Chinese learning time, and the effect of different learning strategies on Chinese level of the learner.The study has found out that (1) the most often used by students while learning Chinese idioms are cognitive and social strategies, less often are compensation and meta-cognitive strategies, and the least often used are memory and affective strategies, (2) Russian students in their choice of learning strategies differ from students with other cultural backgrounds, (3) gender does not have any clear influence on the choice of learning strategies, (4) the longer Russian students study Chinese, the less they use affective strategies, and (5) learners who has achieved a high level of Chinese proficiency tend to use affective and meta-cognitive strategies more often than students with a lower Chinese level, thus, the usage of affective and meta-cognitive strategies directly influences Chinese proficiency.Finally, on the basis of the research the author gives some advice to teachers of Chinese as a second language:(1) While teaching idioms, the teacher should make students think a lot. (2) When explaining idioms, the teacher must clearly explain every part of the idiom, and its inner structure. (3) It is best to analyze idioms from the Classical Chinese grammar point of view. (4) The teacher must promote communication between students, tell each other stories about Chinese idioms, discuss idioms, make speeches, perform, etc. (5) The teacher must take into consideration the difference in learning strategies preferred by the students of different countries (6) The teacher must help students keep optimistic approach and study actively. (7) The teacher must keep students interested (8) The teacher must teach students to control their study process and check their progress, introduce to them systematic approaches to learn idioms.